Category:

opinion

It’s likely that 2016 will be remembered as a collective slap in the face. We lost a number of cultural icons, Trump became president, the UK voted to exit the EU, Aleppo saw one of the worst humanitarian crisis of the decade, and that was all in the last half of the year. Released on the

"We’re very proud of it. Not least because, for the past few years, life hasn’t been particularly easy for us, and our music reflects our state of mind. There were these moments when we presumed we had lost our sense of celebration, and would just be stuck in these gloomy, lamenting and inevitably

With any pop artist, when you strip everything away, a singular question remains: ‘why should I care?’ All the great artists know this, and even when singing through the most banal platitudes, they find a way to make you care. About their story. About their life. ‘Mariam’, a previous release from Mooroo, set the

Unlike previous Forever South Collections, the Hotcues series is manic, frenzied and relentless. While FXS Collections Vol.3 was a colourful experience, Hotcues occasionally moves into trap territory and, while it sounds massive and exciting, there’s a niggling worry that trap is already somewhat out of date, a rigid percussive genre that is running out of places to go. Like EDM, trap occasionally

A mission statement, taken from the Noland label Soundcloud: “NOLAND is not about global and local, not about identity, not about diversity and not about North and South cooperation. NOLAND is about a constellation of individuals, of identities, about laughing, arguing and the cosmic beauty of making music together in space which has

I’ve always, like many people, hated the term ‘fusion’ music. There’s an Indian restaurant down the road from where I used to live that advertised itself as a ‘fusion’ restaurant, blending Indian cuisine with fresh, innovative recipes. “Yes, you can have Tikka Masala but we have some new ways for you to enjoy it”

I always find it difficult to write about electronic music like this, as it seems so dependent upon space. Tollcrane’s latest LP has a cavernous, huge sound to it, that seems more suited to a warehouse than bursting though headphones. There is the sense that this is very much dance music, made for moving bodies,

First Impressions: T5 I get ‘interviewed’ at Durham Airport (fucking DURHAM airport) where a nice woman looks through my bags and says what's this? (hard drive) and what's this? (camera batteries) and have you ever been involved in tribal warfare? (no). I feel like a little schoolboy and I'm reminded of a time at school when the lunch lady asks

What a start for Mooshymoo. The first EP to be released by the DIY label, this collection of 5 stunning tracks from Dalt Wisney, alter ego for Shehryar Hyatt, is one of the most interesting and layered additions to the Pakistani experimental scene, and remains so 9 years after its release. The EP begins, however,

I came across Slowspin, aka Zeerak Ahmed, after falling into a soundcloud hole, prompted by Tonje Thilesen's fantastic article in Pitchfork Magazine entitled Searching for an Underground Generation in Karachi, Pakistan. First was Rise, a steadfastly lo-fi track, with a generous glaze of vinyl crackle covering the whole thing. The repeated lyric is almost indecipherable — don’t… very far? go back